


Raconteurs

by VeronicaRich



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Humor, Missing Scene, Original Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 23:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10729803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeronicaRich/pseuds/VeronicaRich
Summary: Gibbs tries to get some new legends going about the new captain of the Flying Dutchman - takes place post-AWE, but set mostly curing CotBP.





	Raconteurs

“Will-me-lad, have a seat.”

Young Turner (I still couldn’t hardly believe Jack’s assertion, except that I was sitting right here and saw the evidence my own good self; merciful heavens! The only way you could tell he weren’t Bill restored to young life were the rum-colored eyes and a slighter build through the shoulders) elected to remain standing at the corner of the table. He was giving Jack a curious look; I had no idea if his father had ever looked at his captain with such furious contemplation, but I rather doubted it.

The empty chair between us skidded back, away from the table, and brushed Turner’s leg. “I’m not accustomed to repeating my orders,” Jack enunciated carefully. “Am I or am I not your captain for this harebrained endeavor, Mr. Turner?”

The boy sat, slowly, and I caught not-very-hushed muttering involving the phrase “certainly the right leader for it” as he did so. I’d seen Jack slap a burly man in the brig for less, but he pretended to ignore Turner’s mumbling and instead, produced a bit of shine from his cuff and slid it across the table to me. “Mr. Gibbs, if you would be so good as to procure some refreshment for us?”

The prospect of more rum lightened my contemplations considerably. “Aye, Captain!” I pushed back and stood with perhaps too much enthusiasm for errand-running. No matter. “Rum all around?”

Turner spoke up. “I don’t drink-”

“Course not,” Jack agreed amiably. “Pint of mother’s milk for this one, Gibbs! And don’t forget a wet cloth for wipin’ it up.”

He gave Jack a dirty look. “I don’t drink rum,” he finished in an even tone, looking at me. “Short beer will be fine.”

“Belay that,” Jack interrupted. “Make his grog, then.”

I didn’t stick around for Turner’s sequential rebuttal; my mouth was already salivating at the prospect of more strong, dark spirits (and I was going to end up with the large tankard this time). I did hear Jack begin lecturing him on the necessity of accepting what he could get while at sea, and that the watered rum would comprise the liquid part of his diet, between whatever raindrops he could catch in his great disagreeing gob.

The boys had already set the table right-side-up again that the Turner kid had kicked over just a couple of minutes ago, and were dealing cards at one end of it. I’d met Bill Turner for the first time following a tavern quarrel in my younger years, and while I’d never seen him kick over a table, it wouldn’t have surprised me – he’d not been stupid, but he’d had a certain tendency toward rashness.

Now on that tale … I don’t remember her name now, but I do recall that night that some over-large gent had taken issue with me passing the time talking to his girl. I was a Navyman then and – if I say so myself – looked right smart in clean sailor’s togs. I’m sure it was my stories the lady had been most interested in, however; I’m not a great looker, but I’ve always had a gift for spinning a yarn, improbable or otherwise. Learned it from my Uncle Roger, much to Mum’s dismay, since she’d wanted me-

Well. See, that’s the problem with storytelling – it’s a miracle if one gets ended before another begins, especially between your own ears.

Anyway, what I was recalling as I walked to the bar and waiting on our pints was how her man and two of his friends had dragged me outside for a “lesson” on respecting ladies. I’m no slouch with fists, but three against one ain’t at all fair, especially considering the lady in question hadn’t seemed offended by my attentions at all (come to think of it, that might not have helped my defense). I was sagging against the corner of the building – they hadn’t even taken the fight into an alleyway, figuring I guess that society at large might benefit from the whop- er, lesson, I was getting – and was about to pass out from getting socked in the face too many times when I see another shadow over me.

Now this was the tallest man I’d ever seen to that point, except for a couple of them African slaves. Didn’t even ask me anything – just grabbed two of those scoundrels by the backs of their coats, one in each hand, and asked if I’d been pickpocketing or waving a weapon around. When they said I hadn’t, he knocked ‘em together so hard they were stumbling around holding their heads; one even threw up on his own boots!

That was Bill Turner – if he went by Bootstrap then, he didn’t say so. I bought him a drink, exchanged some pleasant conversation for part of the evening, then we went our ways. Only saw each other once more, by chance in a woodshop; I was looking for some discard blocks to whittle aboard ship, and he was eyeing the marionettes and little wooden horses to try to find something for his boy’s birthday. I pointed out the swords, and he just laughed and said his mate Jack had already picked up one of those for the kid-

-Which, I guess, was the same lad Jack Sparrow was sitting back and eyeing carefully when I made it to the back room with our tankards. Only a few minutes had passed, but there seemed to be some sort of détente, both of them their arms crossed and them silent as the grave.

I don’t much handle silence well, and this one seemed about to snap with a clock to someone’s nose. Setting down the tankards, I turned to the boy as I settled myself on the bench again. “Drink up, lad,” I offered. “The Captain says you’re a smith?”

As Will nodded, I noted out of the corner of my eye that Jack was frowning at his own small tankard, lifting it to eye level and turning it. “You make swords, too?” Sneaky-like, I scooted my hand toward my larger tankard; alas, Jack had already spotted it and was dragging it away with his beringed fingers on the rim.

“I’ve been crafting them for a few years, yes,” Turner was saying. “The one I’m carrying is one of my later pieces.”

“Oh?” I said. Now Jack had the large tankard at his lips and was looking directly at me over the rim, eyebrows drawn together in challenge. When he caught my peripheral glance, he placed his fingertips against the rim of the smaller one and pushed it toward me. I managed to add, “Let’s see it, then,” without letting too much of an unmanly sob creep into my voice.

For the rest of the evening, Jack curbed my rum intake as carefully as he encouraged Turner’s. I wondered at it, since I didn’t think the kid drank all that much, but he did get progressively more relaxed and soppy, at least for him (believe me, I’ve seen worse in my years – one fellow once got so lit that he went diving for doubloons … in a rain barrel. Kept yelling about sharks, but all it was were splinters poking him in the belly). The level in his cups kept sinking progressively, though I have to admit I didn’t see him raising them to his mouth as often as Jack and I drank.

And did we drink! It wasn’t the first time the Captain and I had put away a few, but it was the first time in a fair number of years (once I reassured him I could still go out and find him an able-bodied crew even in the wee hours of the morning). The two of us started out on our own, taking turns telling the Turner kid about Jack’s adventures – carefully edited and embellished, of course. You never tell anyone all your intentions, and more than you’ve actually done. He started the evening with a frown, but eventually loosened up, eyes predictably shining with youthful impression.

“-And then there was the kraken,” Jack started in at some point, hands wide apart to indicate the monster’s eye size. “This big – no, THIS big. Whole was big as a ship – not one of those lil’ Navy girls like th’ _Interceptor_ , but a real ship. A pirate ship, a proper one like th’ _Black Pearl_.”

Turner seemed to think for a moment, as if trying to remember, leaning forward, yawning and holding his head up, eyes at half-mast as he stopped nodding along. “Barbossa’s ship, right?”

Jack looked pained and glared at the oblivious boy. “Aye, her.” He sucked in a breath, another sip of rum, and plunged forth. “Thing’s tentacles are at least thirty feet long. Were. _Were_.” The look on his face clearly said what he really thought of the questionable idea a beast that size might be dead. “Was thrashin’ around, wavin’ those fifty-foot arms around, suckers big as dinghies-”

“I thought they were only thirty feet long.” Turner was tracing a bead of liquid up the side of his mug, now giving Jack a hooded, suspicious look. “You said thirty.”

“I didn’t swim over to measure th’ bloody things!” Jack stabbed a forefinger almost into Turner’s face. “It’s an educated guess. You wan’ finish telling this tale?”

The kid snorted, tapping his wet finger on the rim of his mug. “Could probably do better ‘n you makin’ up th’ stuff you’ve yammered all night.”

I tensed my leg muscles, prepared to slide under the table; Hurricane Jack looked about ready to make landfall! His face flushed an interesting shade of dark, and the finger didn’t move. Turner simply crossed his eyes to stare down at it, frowning as I guess he was trying to focus on it. “It’s not customary to question your captain, boy,” Jack warned him, his voice dropping, sounding fairly cold despite the slur. “Or have you found another way to get to your bloody strumpet?”

That seemed to dissolve the tension; Turner cleared his throat uncomfortably, I thought, and blinked. “Fifty feet, you say?”

One of Jack’s best qualities is he don’t hold a grudge unless the offense is really worth it. He dropped his hand to the table and pulled it back, his face returning to its customary shade. “More or less,” he growled, then composed himself, sitting up straighter, taking command of the table again. “It’s a real creature, Mr. Turner, as real as you or I sitting here, or this table.” He thumped on it. “For your sake, I hope it remains in th’ realm of the fantastic for you – but you need to learn there’s more on Earth, if not in th’ heavens, than mortal men imagine.”

Well, the rest of the night went on like this, more or less. Weren’t none of us really fit to stand at the end of the … ah, morning, I thought. But we staggered to our feet and headed for the front, Jack in the lead, staggering a bit faster than us. He hadn’t paid for the last two rounds, and managed to get out of there before the proprietor realized we were gone.

Of course, this bit of pirating would’ve worked better if Turner hadn’t stopped off to leave payment at the counter after Jack was out the door, but as I told you when I started this, this is the kind of bloke you’re dealing with now. Anyway, we get outside, and there stands Jack, furious as a storm, with twice as much piss as one, hands on his hips, glaring at the kid. “What,” he bellowed, “do you bloody think you’re doing?”

And you won’t believe it – sober as your preacher last Sunday, Turner stands up straight, glares at him, and says, with a twinkle in his dark eye, “Not all of us lost count, Jack. Fair’s fair, you mad old bastard. Now – give me my shilling back!”

*******

Around him, patrons and a couple of serving girls broke out into guffaws; they knew Jack Sparrow and much as most of them liked him, were tickled by a boy half his age getting the best of him. “And that,” Gibbs finished off, “is the first time I ever met the Captain of the _Flying Dutchman_ , swear it on me mother’s headstone!”

He was hesitant to say “grave,” since that implied the tale had been entirely truthful. But as he accepted a handshake and a free pint from the bemused proprietor for his evening’s entertainment, Gibbs reflected that nobody wanted to hear how a powerful being such as the Ferryman had ever been a 10-year-old kid hauled aboard a Navy ship like a drowned rat – and not much bigger than one. His job was to instill confidence that the _Dutchman’s_ new captain was far more benevolent and merciful than his predecessor, as well as wise.

When the crowd around him had thinned, Gibbs carried his drink to the back room of the tavern, noted there weren’t many people, and sauntered to the booth where his most-times captain leaned back in one chair, feet propped in another. “That took enough time,” he said, once the older man sat in a free chair. “Gets longer every time you tell it, doesn’t it?”

“Now, Jack, I don’t tell you how to captain,” Gibbs jokingly admonished. “You should know better than to tell a man how to do his job. It’s bad luck.”

Jack Sparrow grinned wryly. “All right, you’re the storyteller.”

“Aye, I’m at it the best I can.” Wherever they traveled, together or separately, Jack and Gibbs and even some of the more gregarious members of the _Black Pearl’s_ crew told tales of Captain Turner. Will himself had made a promise: If they would do their bit to spread a set of stories about Davy Jones’s replacement that painted him as less terrifying and more human, it would make his job less heartbreaking – a problem Jack had seemed surprised Will had, given he had no heart (until Will had pointed out rather archly that he was still in possession of his own soul, thank you) – and in return, he would make their own eventual crossing as painless and pleasant as possible. He hadn’t expressly promised assistance at sea before then to _stave off_ such crossing, but it was heavily implied in the way he’d looked at each man. Especially Jack.

Jack had looked back at the young undead captain for a long time with an expression Gibbs wasn’t sure he wanted to spend too much time deciphering, before he’d nodded. “All right, mate,” Jack had agreed, quietly. “We’ll take care of it.”

“What I don’t get,” Gibbs asked, he drank from a mug larger than Jack’s (finally!), “is why you wanted me to change the end of that story. Makes you look a lot like a fool, Captain. Will did say he wanted to seem more human to sailors – and I’d say they were all drunk off their arses at least once when they were new whelps at sea.” He remembered he and Jack having to prop Will between them to maneuver him back to the dock and into the rowboat.

Jack stroked his mustache. “Perhaps,” he agreed, an odd, faraway look in his black eyes before he focused on his quartermaster. “But, Josh, you should know by now – if there’s one thing people love more than hearing a legend, that’s one legend gettin’ his pin pricked by another.”


End file.
